What's in a name?

The good-to-great news on the covid front has been the full approval by the FDA of Pfizer's vaccine. 

I'm hopeful that this will push some of the anti-vaxxers to finally get vaccinated. If nothing else, it lets them save a bit of face if they've been claiming  (for whatever - generally uninformed - reason) that they have been oh, so wisely holding out for the FDA imprimatur.

Inevitably, the ink on the pronouncement wasn't dry before the talking points brigade was out there yammering about how the FDA was forced into making a premature decision here. But I still think that we'll see an uptick in vaccinations.

This move by the FDA may prove especially effective when combined with the dire news coming out of states where the great unvaxxed are monopolizing hospital/ICU beds and dying at alarming but not surprising rates. Surely, the dying wishes of ventilated anti-vaxxers - a variant on what we used to call back in my religo days a deathbed confession -  that friends and family get vaccinated will push some of the vaccine-shy to do the right thing.

Anyway, I'm buoyed by the news about Pfizer, and eagerly await a similar call being made on Moderna and J&J. Maybe we'll finally kinda-sorta-maybe be turning a corner, so that we don't have to go through another grim winter of lockdowns, shutdowns, and going-out-of-business signs.

While Pfizer's FDA approval has been good-to-great news on the pandemic front, the rollout of the official vaccine has not been without its lighter moments. Namely, the reaction to the announcement of the vaccine's name: Comirnaty. (Not that you'll ever have to say it, but it's pronounced koe-mir-na-tee. Just not certain which syllables are accented.)

I know up close and personal that naming a product isn't easy, and that you're lucky if you please anyone, let alone everyone. At least when I was helping name products back in the day, we weren't spending any money on it. I think I may have run a couple of contests where we gave the winner of the name-that-product contest a hundred bucks or so, but product naming in small tech companies was done on the total cheap.

Not so with Pfizer, which used the Brand Institute, a naming agency with a specialty in pharmaceuticals. I'm guessing they were paid well over $100K to develop the Comirnaty name. 

Unlike the Twitter critics, I don't think it's a bad name at all. I mean, it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, but it's not all that awful. And it tells a story. 

According to Pfizer, the pharmaceutical companies [Pfizer in collaboration with BioNTech] wanted to emphasize COVID-19 immunization and the vaccine's core mRNA technology. They also wanted to encompass "community" and "immunity" into the final product. (Source: NPR)

Not that anyone will actually use the name, mind you. At least not for a while. (Once we're into covid-as-the-new-normal mode, where there'll be an annual covid shot, we'll no doubt hear the Comirnaty name. Clinical studies show that Comirnaty is more effective than any other leading brand. Don't take Comirnaty if you're allergic to Comirnaty. With Comirnaty you may experience shortness of breath and suicidal ideation. Tell your doctor if you experience an erection that lasts more than 48 hours. Viva Comirnaty.)

The short list included Covuity, RnaxCovi, Kovimerna, and RNXtract.

Covuity is too close to Genuity, a late and not particularly lamented company I once worked for. RnaxCovi and RNXtract just don't work. I suspect that they'd end up being abbreviated to Covi and Xtract. And Kovimerna sounds like a Russian term of endearment. That or a Greek greeting. Kalimera, Kovimerna. 

So Comirnaty it is!

The best comment I saw on it was that it sounds like a town in Ireland. Indeed.

Anyway, I'm happy to see a bit of levity at play here. Covid is deadly, and deadly serious, but if the Comirnaty name has given a few people a teeny-tiny little laughlet or two, I'm all for it. 

And wait until the Twitterverse gets wind of the rumored Moderna brand name for their vaccine: Spikevax.

Spikevax, eh? 

Sounds more like a Viagra competitor, but I can imagine telling someone I got Spiked when I go for my booster. More than I can say for Comirnaty. But, as a Moderna girl, I may be biased in their favor.

Whatever flavor, whatever brand. Viva Comirnaty! Viva Spikevax!